Doodle mornings serve up local flavor

I awoke at 5:30 one recent Friday morning, packed a bag, and set out through the snow for a day's worth of intense anthropological observation. Knowing that the best way to learn about a culture is to become immersed in it, I planned to set up camp on a stool at the Yankee Doodle and, armed only with notebook and pen, discover the secrets of its elusive breakfast crowd.

SARAH ENGLAND/YH

We've all at least heard of the Doodle, even if we haven't also downed a few of its signature buttered hamburgers and fried doughnuts. But morning is quite commonly lost on us Yale students. We've abandoned breakfast in favor of the midnight snack. Vampirishly addicted to the dark, we consider it terribly noteworthy to be out of bed before 9:30 a.m. Living in this pattern, we consistently miss such worthwhile features of the pre-noon period as the sunrise, Bob Edwards on NPR, and omelets at the Yankee Doodle diner.

Rick Beckwith, however, wakes up by 4 a.m. every day in order to be at the restaurant and ready to fry eggs before most of the city's population has to be at work. And a good portion of that population—especially good as compared to the number of seats in his bedroom-sized diner—takes advantage of his presence there to stop in for a warm bite, a good word, and a coffee fix. Somehow able to be dressed and eating and thinking and talking at that hour, New Haven's workforce makes for a lively crowd, but few students arrive in time to witness this scene or to get a crack at the eggs before 10:30 a.m., after which house rules say only sandwiches will be served.

REBECCA ROSENTHAL/YH Digging in at the counter with the men who build New Haven.

That morning, I saw it all.  There was only one point at which I was alone with the Rick and his sister Darlene, the five-minute window when I ate the first of many orders, a cheese omelet. In the lull before more customers arrived, we chatted about the further adventures of the last Doodle Challenge champion. Turns out the professional eater who downed 28 hamburgers in two-and-a-half hours went on to be sadly daunted by four-and-a-half pounds of chicken on the bone set before him in a Japanese-sponsored eating contest held in Las Vegas, Nev. Apparently, some skinny woman from New Jersey easily bested him by more than a pound of chicken. Suddenly, 28 hamburgers seemed much less gross.

Rick and Darlene warned me that in a few hours, business would get so heavy as to be almost ugly. "It's going to get crazy around 8:30 or 9 with the construction workers in here. You might have to stand. We get a line right out the door," Rick told me. I gamely figured that by that time I wouldn't mind a little break from sitting down.

REBECCA ROSENTHAL/YH Rick Beckwith cranks out eggs for his hungry clientele.

Soon a man called Walt came in with a few rolls of change, also bringing behind him a small string of other diners, all familiar to Rick and Darlene. Two sitting down at the other end of the counter asked Rick if his father had received the fruit basket they'd sent him. This marked my first encounter with two charming Doodle phenomena: customer concern for Lew Beckwith's health and the Regulars.

The elder Beckwith's recent illness is the reason why the Doodle's hours have been

reduced. Reasonably, I'd say, Rick believes that he can only stand in front of the grill for 12-and-a-half hours every day instead of 17. A good half of the day's customers and most of the people who called on the phone made friendly inquiries about his father's health. Many were encouraged to stop by the house to visit him or to give him a call; one can imagine that a man accustomed to dishing out in the neighborhood of 1,000 burgers a day might find convalescence a bit understimulating. Darlene said he still always wakes up at 4 a.m.

REBECCA ROSENTHAL/YH

Everyone who asked about their father, that same solid 50 percent of the clientele, was on a first-name basis with Rick and Darlene. The Beckwiths' Rolodex must weigh 30 lbs. Not only do they know these people's names, who they are, and what they do, they've also memorized what they want to eat. Any familiar character coming through the door is immediately greeted with, "Morning! Bacon, egg, and cheese on a hard roll, extra bacon?" or some other accurate menu selection. I suppose the Regulars keep up their end of the deal by wanting to eat the same things every morning, which I also find somewhat amazing. It's like some kind of utopia. Or Cheers.

On that great expired TV homage to both the neighborhood establishment and the regular customer, Norm would walk in the door, people would shout "Norm!" and he would instantly be presented with the object of his stomach's desire. He would also be subjected to ruthless teasing by the staff for as long as he was taking up space at their counter. The Norm of the Doodle, as I saw it, was Carlos.

REBECCA ROSENTHAL/YH

Carlos is working on the Saybrook renovation. A few minutes after two of his co-workers came in at 6:30 a.m., his absence was under discussion at the very moment he finally came through the door. Rick greeted him by name, served him the usual, and then set in on the ribbing. "Two years from now when that building falls down they're gonna be looking for you on your coffee farm in Guatemala," he teased. Carlos took it good-naturedly.

Rick regaled him with free advice as he ate. "Cherry Jolt Cola keeps me going at nine, you know, that fun time of the day. I tried Mountain Dew once, but it did nothing, it's not as good." "If you die, the Knights of Columbus are going to take care of your family? I don't know if you should be so sure of that." "Your goal today is, you see how quickly at nine I'm making eggs? That's how fast you gotta weld." Carlos and company headed out the door around seven, Rick calling after them a sarcastic invitation to drop back in for the fun at nine.

REBECCA ROSENTHAL/YH

The following hour was taken up by Regulars, with a few unknown faces mixed in. The familiar folks ate their familiar food and chatted familiarly. Mr. Beckwith was asked about. The snow was analyzed and lamented. Kids, dogs, The Sopranos came up. It was all so comfortable and normal I felt like I was sitting in someone's kitchen. I asked for an orange juice and Darlene took care of me.

This restaurant is a fixture in the fullest sense of the word. I suppose that the customers closer to middle age, far away from their childhoods, with their own homes, kitchens, and children, can't quite get the feeling I had of sitting in my mom's house. Still, they've got to feel how time stops while they're in the Doodle. The menu hardly changes. The prices are always affordable. The décor is unpretentious. There's no cause for fuss at all. The world outside hurries and splashes and honks as it goes by, but they are sitting down to eat, and it'll be just a little while before they go back out and deal with it.

REBECCA ROSENTHAL/YH

Trade picked up to quite a steady pace by quarter after eight, but I became engrossed in a long conversation with the woman sitting to my left. She was able to come in for such a late breakfast that day because she was on medical leave from her job at Winchester Repeating Arms, one of the few manufacturing facilities left in New Haven. After 35 years on the assembly line, she's only two years from retirement but worries that she'll never make it back to work. The repetitive motions she performed in those many years of 12-and-a-half-hour shifts have caused carpal tunnel syndrome in both her hands and have worn out her knees to the point where they both require surgery, and she simply can't do the work any longer. Probably, at her age, and with her limited background, she can't find another job, either.

She explained to me that her situation is actually quite bearable in comparison to the cancer that killed several of her co-workers. And time off from work is really something of a blessing, giving her the freedom to visit ailing friends and her elderly mother and also to participate in her favorite community service groups. Going out to breakfast is a treat, too, and she knows a lot of places in the area where they serve some pretty fine food, though the Doodle is always her favorite.

REBECCA ROSENTHAL/YH

I didn't entirely believe that I was talking to a real person. An author doing a profile on a community gathering place could not ask for a better character to walk up and provide detailed, compelling personal testimony about that community and that gathering place. Nor could I imagine that if I were in her place, knowing that my employer had destroyed my health and my chances of ever working anywhere else, I would be so matter-of-fact and unlitigious. She turned to talk about the weather with the woman on her other side. I said "take care" as sincerely as possible when she put on her jacket and left a few minutes later.

It was 8:50 A.M., and before I had a chance to flee or even take protective measures, the rush was on. I heard Darlene comment that to-day's business was slower than usual due to the snow, but nevertheless she and Rick were moving like sped-up video images, filling orders for the well-attended counter and the constantly-replenished line of customers standing along the wall. It never got so bad that I had to stand up, although I suppose, if I had, some-body's take-out order could have turned into a sit-down meal. Most of these men were construction workers, as promised, and I soon received one of them as my new neighbor.

He told me that the work on Saybrook was going according to schedule, but only because the whole crew was getting two hours of overtime every single day. "I've been working here at Yale for 10 years now, and it's never going to end," he said. "Yale's the only steady provider of construction work in the city. You get 100 guys a day working on it for 100 years, they'll never be done."

Rick was working at the grill like a machine, to borrow my neighbor's observation, and the construction workers kept coming. A supervisor type sitting down at the far end suddenly yelled, "I got a Jamaican, a Puerto Rican, an Italian, and a Guatemalan today!" The guy next to me called back, "Hey, what about me?" "And an electrician!" hollered the supervisor. "You'll see me about two o'clock with a needle in my arm."

Despite the apparent intolerability of his crew, the supervisor insisted on paying for everyone's meal. The men accepted the gift with all due grace, laughing, "What's the matter? You got the needle in your arm already?" Suddenly the boss grew business-like and hustled them all out of the restaurant. Darlene marveled at their willingness to leave on his word and was advised by a wise-guy on his way out, "What you don't know is that in the gang bus he's got a cat o'nine tails."

And then the restaurant was empty except for myself and one other customer. Rick stepped away from the grill. Darlene had a moment to tell me that they were down a few construction workers due to the snow, but that the breakfast rush was usually dissipating by this time anyway. The morning's end was signaled emphatically by the arrival of groups of students coming back from classes—a few had been in earlier, but they had adapted to the tone set by the older crowd, willing to chat about the topics of the day. The 10:30 a.m. types talked more about school, and almost exclusively to each other.

An epilogue, which would also make a good ending to an episode of Cheers: Carlos and his friends came back for lunch around noon. He ordered quietly, only to have Rick hoot, "A hamburger with a slice of cheese! Here in the States we call that a cheeseburger. My father's ears are burning!"

Eventually the construction workers and Rick and Darlene picked up a conversation about the particular trouble of one of these middle-aged men with finding himself a woman. Various pick-up places were suggested and rejected, and things looked bleak until Carlos offered, "You should come to the party at my house this weekend. It's my birthday. My cousin's coming, she's beautiful. You should meet her. She'd really heat you up, I'm serious. She can dance!" His friend grew interested, and Carlos kept urging him to come meet her until everyone was sold on the plan.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Carlos said demurely as he stood up to go back to work. "She's only 16."

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